Utasty » Thai http://www.utasty.com Great food in a strange land Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:55:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Thai Kitchen http://www.utasty.com/thai-kitchen/ http://www.utasty.com/thai-kitchen/#comments Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:52:15 +0000 Ninjoe http://www.utasty.com/?p=3

In a seemingly endless quest to find phở (see this post for a more detailed explanation of phở) in Utah County, we have eaten at nearly every Asian, Asian themed and Asian wannabe restaurant in the valley. On one such excursion, we made a foray into the land called Provo and to the restaurant called The Thai Kitchen. My Thai friend’s aunt is supposedly one of the chefs there, or was, or is from Thailand. I can’t remember which. I think, but I could be wrong, that he told me I could procure some phở from said The Thai Kitchen. Of course I dragged Jason along to experiment.

The waitress was friendly and we spent many minutes discussing the awesomeness of phở and all the great places in Salt Lake and Las Vegas where you can eat delicious phở. Then she blew our minds when she told us about Thai phở which is entirely different yet still very delicious. Being the phởnoisseurs that we believe ourselves to be, we both ordered a bowl of the Thai version of the soup.

Thailand and Vietnam are not best friends, geographically speaking, but they share the same peninsula and hopefully the Laotian buffer between them has not filtered out too much of what makes this dish a favorite of hip Americans.

–Joe

As Joe mentioned, we came here for the phở. Because of this, we didn’t try anything else on the menu, except for the satay. Let me first talk about the satay. It was very good. It had a smooth peanut flavor, but there was also a nice coconut undertone to it. Very well rounded. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now, to the phở… Thai and Lao phở are slightly different from the Vietnamese version. They have more aromatic ingredients, such as celery and carrots, added to the broth. As a result of this, the broth is a slightly different color and has less of an anise flavor than you might expect if you are used to the Vietnamese version. I’m not much of a fan of cooked carrots, and as such, eating phở with carrots in it was a pretty strange experience for me. I must admit, however, that I really liked it. So, while it might not curb your craving for authentic Vietnamese phở, the version sold at The Thai Kitchen is quite a tasty treat.

We will return one day to this quiet restaurant and sample some more of their menu. Rest assured, however, that we will keep you informed!

–Jason

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